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Thanks for visiting snowgenius.com! We’re back for a third season, and will be adding more and more content throughout the 2013/2014 on everything to do with skiing and snow sports generally. In the meantime, do explore the links below, and if you have any feedback then drop us a line at admin@snowgenius.com or tweet at us @snow_genius!

K2 Pon2oon Review The K2 Pontoon is an absolute classic in the powder skiing world. Introduced in 2004 and based on the late Shane McConkey’s revolutionary views on ski design, the Pontoon has always been an unashamedly no-holds-barred soft snow weapon, and can easily be identified from its float plane graphics and unique shape. …

For skiers and boarders in the UK, one major question is where to head on a ski trip – short haul to Europe, or long haul to North America? While the US and Canada are often thought of as having better the snow, the start of this 2011/12 season has shown that this isn’t necessarily …

When the time came to write this article about Lyngen, I had to think twice. On the one hand, Lyngen is an amazing, largely undiscovered (by the masses), beautiful skiing wilderness with challenging ascents and descents, scenery like nowhere else on earth, no ski lifts, and very few tourists. On the other hand, one of …

Volkl Shiro Review The Volkl Shiro is another aggressive big mountain ski with new graphics for the 2013 season. The Shiro is pretty wide underfoot at 119 mm, and it’s rockered along the whole length of the ski, so this is very much a ski designed for powder skiing. The company claims that its profile …

Armada JJ Review The Armada JJ’s are the big mountain skis everyone is talking about. With Armada’s patented EST Freeride Rocker these skis are designed primarily for those who spend the majority of their time chasing powder in the backcountry, but don’t want to have a terrible time skiing the pistes back to the lifts. …

Kästle FX 104 review Austrian ski brand Kästle has a long history, but production of skis had stopped until 2007, when the name was resurrected by a group of Austrians focussed on high-end ski manufacture. The “FX” in the name denotes freeski mountaineering, and the ski is intended to be a lightweight ski that can …

Oakley Airwave Goggles Oakley have joined forces with Recon Instruments to integrate Recon’s fighter-pilot style heads-up display into into Oakley’s high end goggles. The Oakley Airwaves cram and impressive amount of technology into a pair of goggles. An onboard accelerometer, gyro, GPS chip and barometer feed you precise details about your speed, altitude, position and the …

Ischgl vs St Anton – which is better? For a very long time, St Anton has been one of Snowgenius’ favourite resorts. We first skied there in December 2006, before the snow had properly arrived for the season, and despite only a handful of runs being open, we had a great time. That’s because St …

Nestled in the Paznuantal Valley in Tyrol, Austria, the ski resort of Ischgl is probably slightly less well known than its neighbour St Anton. Although the two are 40 minutes apart by road, it is possible to ski tour from the top of Rendl in St Anton down to Ischgl. What Ischgl is well known for, though, is its apres ski …

Deer Valley is located to the east of Salt Lake City, in the “Wasatch Back” near to Park City. The resort is distinguished by its upscale facilities and service, and has the distinction of having come top in SKI magazine’s reader resort survey an unprecedented five times in a row, from 2007 to 2011. It …

Hestra have a long history of making gloves – the company was founded in 1936 in Hestra, Sweden, and originally made gloves for the local lumberjacks. They are now one of better known ski glove manufacturers at the top end of the market, so when Snowgenius’ old pair of gloves finally expired and (and no …

Snowgenius just got back from a ten-day ski trip to Utah, and while we enjoyed the skiing at all the resorts we visited, it’s fair to say that Alta was our favourite – here’s our quick review! Nestled at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon, about a 45 minute drive from downtown Salt Lake City, …

In 2009, the small company Woodman Labs shook up the wearable camera market by introducing the GoPro HD Hero. Prior to its introduction, affordable wearable cameras had only been available shooting in standard definition, and this, coupled with the relatively narrow-angle lens they used, meant the footage tended to be somewhat underwhelming – low resolution, …

Salomon Czar Review The Salomon Czar rules the big mountain domain. With 111mm underfoot and a long, long turn radius of nearly 45m, the Czar is most at home blasting though untracked snow on a powder day. Its dimensions and rockered tip give it great flotation, while the more standard camber underfoot aids stability. It …

K2 Coomback Review K2’s Coombacks have been through a few iterations over the years and have gained almost legendary status amongst backcountry skiers. Named after Doug Coombs, an alpine skier and mountaineer who pioneered extreme skiing , a portion of the profits from the original ski (the Coomba) went to Doug Coombs’ family after his …

Scott Crusade Review First introduced for the 2008/2009 season, the Crusade has established itself within Scott’s line-up of freeride skis. This season sporting an abstract metallic-style topsheet graphic, the Crusade is a touted as a go-anywhere, ski-anything ski – so how does it measure up on the snow? The first thing you notice about …

Salomon BBR 7.9 Review Salomon’s new (some would say revolutionary) ski shape for 2012. The BBR 7.9 – somewhat uninspiringly named for the width under the bindings in centimetres – is the smaller brother to the bigger BBR 8.9 (to be reviewed here soon), but both share a radically oversized tip apparently inspired by watersports, …